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S E R M ON 



rllEACHEU TO THE 



THIRD CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY OF IIIXGHAM, 



I'NDAY, MARCH 2, 1851 



SY OLIVER STEARNS, 

MINISTER 01? THE SOCIETY. 



•PuMfsljrti 0|> Hcqucst. 



BOSTON: 
WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 

111, Washington Street. 
1851. 




Glass £%<57? 
Book -Oft/ _ 



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SERMON 



PREACHED in THE 



THIRD CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY OF H1NGHAM, 



o.N SUNDAY, MARCH 2, L851. 



BY OLIVER STEARNS, 

MINISTER. OF THE SOCIETY. 



ijiioiisticti b£ Request. 



BOSTON: 

WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 

111, Washington Street. 

1851. 






.St/ 






This Discourse is a little enlarged in a few passages, and is encumbered 
with notes, for the sake of a more full discussion than it contained as 
delivered. 



In Exchange 
Cornell Univ. 



2 Fob OS 



BOSTON : 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND 80N, 

No. 22, School-street. 






To the Rev. Oliver Stearns. 

Hingham, March 24, 1851. 

Dear Sir, — The undersigned arc of opinion, that the Sermon 
recently preached by you, upon the subject of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, contains a most valuable and instructive discussion of the 
moral and religious questions practically raised by that Act before 
the tribunal of every individual conscience. And we regard as 
of the highest importance whatever tends to help us to just 
convictions touching the duty we owe to God and our afflicted 
brethren, in connection with our duty as citizens. Tendering to 
you, therefore, our thanks for the benefit already derived from 
the Sermon alluded to, we respectfully request you to place in 
our hands the manuscript for publication. 



Faithfully yours. 



GoRHAM LlNCOLN 

J. A. Andrew 
Jno. O. Lovett 
Joseph Sprague 
David H. Abbott 
Perez Lincoln 
David Lincoln 
Eben Gay 
Isaac Winslow 
David Andrews 
Geo. Lincoln, Jun. 



To Deacon (la/ -1111111 Lincoln and others. 

April 15, 1851. 

( I entlemen, — I have received your communication, request- 
ing a copy of a Sermon preached by me on the Fugitive Slave 
Law for the press. Thanking you for the kind terms in which 
you have expressed it, I will comply with your request. 

Your friend and servant, 

Ouvr.n S-i evkns. 



SERMON. 



COLOSSIANS, m. 17: 

" AXD WHATSOEVER TE DO IX WORD OR DEED, DO ALL IX THE NAME OF THB 

LORD JESUS, GIVING THANKS TO GOD AXD THE FATHER BY HIM." 



We are to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus. 
We are to do nothing in which, with the thought of 
Jesus in our minds, we cannot invoke God's aid. 

We are to acknowledge ever the divine Mastership 
of Jesus, appealing to his authority as paramount to 
all other in questions of duty. We are to ask, What 
is the mind, the intention, of Christ'? How do his 
precepts and life apply to this or that case in which 
we are to act \ And, when the world inquire why we 
maintain a particular principle or pursue a particular 
course as Christians, we ought to be able to answer, 
that we act in obedience to the truth as it is in Jesus, 
whom God sent into the world to shed light on 
human duty. 



We are to converse and act consistently with the 
character of disciple of such a Master, and as if 
the spirit, the feelings, the principles, of Jesus gov- 
erned us. Do we perceive some dreaded calamity 
impending over us, we must remember the submission 
of Jesus ; we must bow ourselves to meet it, and seek 
through its influence to enter into deeper communion 
with God in Christ. Or do we behold any of our 
brethren for whom Christ died suffering wrongfully, 
robbed of rights, and seeking deliverance and redress, 
we ought to vindicate their cause and relieve their 
suffering ; remembering him who said, " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

In doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
it is implied that we shall do what the spirit of his 
life and instructions require, though we find no 
precept verbally applicable to the case. He could 
not give precepts verbally corresponding to a ten- 
thousandth part of the cases of human conduct. For 
the most, he declared great general truths, and set 
forth the great ends of human life, leaving us by their 
light to discern the right way. And when, feeling 
these truths and keeping in view these ends, we 
desire to act always so as to promote the regeneration 
of individual and universal man, and God's true 



glory, — when we thus ask all things in Christ's 
name, the Father will direct us. Christ spake no 
w.»r.l. which has come down to us, expressly enjoin- 
ing our present use of Sunday; and if it were legiti- 
mate to argue from the silence of Jesus, as is done 
in other cases, we might, in his name, convert it to 
secular purposes forthwith. His treatment of the 
Jewish Sabbath banished it with circumcision and 
the smoke of animal sacrifices ; but we know not that 
he ever spoke of Sunday. Yet he consecrates Sun- 
day ; and his disciple, seeing the need of it for the 
ends of Christ's mission, finds Christ's spirit enjoining 
its separation from common employments, and feels 
himself as much forbidden by Christianity to turn 
over this day to the pursuit of business or revelry, 
as to lie or steal. Christ's spirit may instruct us as 
clearly, and bind us as solemnly, as if he were here 
to-day orally teaching us. 

By doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
I understand also that we must follow him without 
questioning, except to know the way to which his 
precepts and example and spirit point. To find this 
way and to walk therein, taking humbly God's allot- 
ment in it, is each one's great concern. We are to 
act and speak as our whole Christian education moves 
us to do, and to trust, without too curiously exploring 



the future. When at Christ's last interview with the 
eleven apostles, after his resurrection, he foretold to 
Peter the destiny of a sufferer for the truth, and this 
apostle was prompted to inquire concerning the fate 
of his fellow-disciple, " Lord, what shall this man 
do I " Jesus rebuked the curiosity : " What is that to 
thee 1 Follow thou me." Christ may now mark out 
for us, if we love the truth, as he did for Peter, the 
path of duty so clearly, that all questioning about its 
influence on our own or others' future, beyond what 
God chooses to reveal, will be useless and impertinent. 

I have made these remarks upon the text as preli- 
minary to a brief discussion of a question which is 
forced upon our consideration. We are called upon 
by law and by the magistrate to assist in re-enslaving 
some of our fellow-men who have escaped from bon- 
dage. Can we do it in the name of the Lord Jesus \ 
It is a practical question. There is no possibility of 
being neutral. By word or deed, we all give support 
to, or withhold it from, the Fugitive Slave Law. I 
affirm that no one can, consistently with Christian 
obligations rightly understood and felt, render it the 
least, either active or moral, support. 

As Jesus left no precept or example literally appli- 
cable to the subject, we must seek his mind in the 
general truths he taught, and in the whole spirit of 



his instructions and life. And I shall found my 
argument on the admission, that the gospel was 
designed ultimately to burst the bonds of the slave. 
Reasoning with a Northern conscience, I reason on 
this admission ; and I shall refer to a pamphlet, en- 
titled " Conscience and the Constitution," on account 
of the high authority under which it was issued, 
and of the peculiar statements and admissions it 
contains. Mr. Stuart says of Christ, that " he took 
care to utter truths, and establish principles, which, 
in their gradual influence, would banish slavery from 
the face of the earth ; but he w r ould leave the comple- 
tion of the work to time, and to the slow but sure 
operation of the principles which he inculcated." He 
also addresses to slaveholders, and prints in Roman 
capitals to arrest their attention, the second great 
commandment, and the golden rule, and the declara- 
tion of an apostle that God hath made of one blood 
all nations of men, and another declaration that the 
one true God is the God, not only of the Jews, but 
also of the Gentiles, lie tells slaveholders, " It is 
impossible for any man to say that he docs as he 
would be done by, in case he subjects his neighbor, 
a human being, to slavery." Vet he charges those 
who think differently from him, in regard to our 
present duty, with ignoring the bearing upon it of 



10 



the word and life of Christ and the apostles. I do 
not ignore it. 

Jesus did not command the immediate abolition of 
slavery, in so many words. He did not assail directly 
the law of society which authorized it. Therefore, it 
is argued, that we may now, at the command of the 
magistrate, deliver up a fellow-man to the slave- 
laws of the region from which he has emigrated. I 
say, the inference is not just. Why did not Jesus 
enjoin in express terms the abolition of slavery 1 The 
answer is as applicable, in the main, to the case of his 
apostles as to his own ; although, as a general remark, 
I would say that I do not admit their words and 
conduct alone to be always of final and decisive 
authority, as I believe those of Christ to be, legiti- 
mately reasoned from and applied. Jesus could not 
do every thing. All things could not be done at once. 
There must be an order, a progression, in all spiritual 
work. The question of the rightfulness of slavery 
was not raised, as it has been since ; and he did not 
raise it, because there was no Christian basis for any 
decision which might abolish it, as there is now. 
Theological must precede moral reform. The Chris- 
tian basis of it was to be laid. It was not merely 
that Jesus would not come into conflict with the 
magistrate. He foretold such a conflict to the apos- 



11 

ties, and bade them not fear it. With all his caution, 
he was himself charged with sedition, as he foresaw. 
He raised one exciting question, one controversy, 
which shortly hurried him to the cross. It related 
to the fulfilment of God's purposes by his people. It 
was his work to separate as many as he could from 
the Mosaic ritual, to eliminate the universal truth 
from Judaism, to break down the partition between 
Jews and Gentiles, and to form that nucleus of Chris- 
tian truth, around which spiritual and moral reforms 
should gather from all nations. Time did not give 
scope for, nor were divine truth and love acting under 
the limitations of a human frame equal to, more than 
this work. He was a sacrifice to it. 

Slavery then existed throughout the Roman em- 
pire, of which Judea was a part. It was sustained 
by Roman as well as Jewish law. Palestine was not 
a free state on the borders of a slave-state. There 
was no free state in the Roman empire. No one to 
whom Christ spoke had any voice in legislation or in 
the administration of government. There "were no 
principles of religion and humanity sufficiently recog- 
nized among the rulers of the world or the ruled for 
Jesus or the apostles to appeal to them against ser- 
vitude. Ml but Judea* were sunk in polytheism and 

* Nor was the moral Btate of Judc;i more auspicious than that of the n si 



12 



its debasing vices, with which the encounter was to be 
a death-struggle. Slavery then, bad as it was, did not 
stand out in glaring contrast with every thing around 

of the Roman empire to so radical a reform as tlic abolition of slavery would 
have been at that time. It involved the question of the equality of Jew.-, 
and Gentiles. The rigorous perpetual Hebrew slavery was that of persons 
of Gentile origin. I think those who have controverted Mr. Stuart's posi- 
tion, — that the command in Deuteronomy, not to deliver a bondman, who 
had escaped, unto his master, applied only to those who fled from surround- 
ing nations to the Hebrews, — have not made out their case. At the same 
time, I think the spirit and the reasons of that command apply now to our 
duty to fugitive slaves. For, if Mr. Stuart's description of American slavery 
be true, society in the Slave States, as regards this institution, as well deserves 
to be accounted heathen in comparison with the laws and privileges of 
Massachusetts, as did the society of idolatrous nations in comparison with 
that of the Hebrews. But I agree with Mr. Stuart, that "there was no 
seventh year and no jubilee year to heathen slaves." This was a part of the 
wall of partition which, as Mr. Stuart justly observes, lie came to break 
down who proclaimed one common God and Father of all. And to try to 
break it down was to aim a blow at all slavery. It was also to begin a 
reform more radical than would be the legal abolition of the chattel-principle 
in these United States, which have nationally announced the doctrines 
requiring it. The question of the true function of the Messiah's office, and 
of Jesus' claims to be received in it, was first and fundamental then. Con- 
cerning the permission given in Lev. xxv, to purchase heathen slaves, Mr. 
Stuart exclaims, with rather extravagant joy, " There it stands (and even 
abolitionists cannot abolish it), that the Jews might have slaves ad libitum." 
W'hat then ? Why, says Mr. Stuart, slaveholding, if God permitted it, is 
not a malum in se (a sin in itself). But it is idle to dispute about words. 
Sin is sin to those possessed of principles which show it to be such. Just as 
much it follows from the permission referred to, that the African slave-trade 
to Christian nations is not a malum in se. Nevertheless, we hang the foreign 
slave-trader as a pirate ; and Mr. Stuart says, "No one can reason from the 
case of the Jews to the case of men who lived after the coming of Christ." 
As little can we reason from then case to that of the rendition of fugitives 
to-day. But there arises a deeper question still. There runs through all 
the reasoning of Mr. Stuart and others (of Dr. Dewey, in one point, in his 
letter to the editors of the " Christian Enquirer"), an assumption that one 
cannot admit the divine mission of Moses, without admitting the sanction of 
divine revelation for whatever he permitted. I deny this assumption. The 



it, as it docs now and in this country. Oppression 
was everywhere. Bondage was but a part of a mass 
of vicious institutions and customs. It was an item of 
a \ast sum of evil. It was not prominent, though it 
was deep. For this reason, it did not the moral harm 
it Joes now. It did not so degrade those who par 
ticipated in it as it would ourselves; just as our 
vicious habit out of many does not so degrade and 
judge an ignorant, miseducated child, as a similar 
vicious habit alone would degrade and condemn a 
well-educated man. It was not a foremost evil to be 
grappled with first by those who were commen- 
cing the regeneration of a world. Roman slaver) 
is hideous enough to us who see it by the reflected 
light of modern freedom; but, though it was just as 
really a violation of God's law, it was not, relatively to 
all life around it, so great an anomaly, and so corrupt- 
ing to the individual mind and heart, as slavery is 
now in a Christian nation. 

Xow, unless we are in circumstances like those of the 
communities and persons that Christ and the apostles 

question arises, Cannot one admit the divine mission of Moses, limited to 
a few great truths, and to one or two great and special ends, without 
logically obliged to concede that he had the special sanction of God for all 
his permissions, for his policy in all its details; that God permitted Eebrew 
slavery in any other sense than that in which he has permitted, and still 
permits, all evil, in 1 providence, which from it all educi 

Rood ? 



14 



taught; unless we are just emerging from polytheism, 
or learning the rudiments of Christianity, their silence 
about the wrongfulness of slavery does not permit us, 
in Christ's name, to help to enslave a human being. 
The question is, Have they been silent to us about it? 
Lt is admitted that Christ designed to overthrow bon- 
dage. "He took care to utter truths, which, by their 
gradual influence, should banish slavery from the 
earth." Through this " gradual influence," then, a 
time would arrive when a Christian disciple could no 
more help to enslave a human being, than he could lie 
or steal, with a good conscience. Christianity began 
very early to abolish slavery. It has been long- 
teaching the rights and responsibilities of men. This 
nation has declared the inalienable rights of man. 
The Constitution of our State recites them, and that 
recital of them terminated bondage here. And we 
claim for Christianity, rightly, the credit of doing all 
this. When will the time arrive, through the gra- 
dual operation of Christ's principles, for a Christian 
conscience to debar all moral participation in slavery, 
if it be not now come ? To whom will it ever come, if 
it have not already come to Mr. Stuart, and to you and 
me, — to the churches of the Pilgrims, and to the theo- 
logical seminaries of New England % It has come. 
Whatever allowance charity may suggest for the 



15 

influences of custom and education upon some who 
dwell in the darkest portions of our country (and I 
am ready to make some such allowance), there is 
light enough here. And the compunction felt in the 
present crisis, and all the special pleading to make 
Christ and the apostles support the Fugitive Law, 
only prove that they are speaking with terrible em- 
phasis in our moral nature, and forbidding us to do 
this abomination in the name of the Lord Jesus. 

I shall be told, however, that the apostles were not 
wholly silent on the subject. I am told not to ignore 
their instructions to masters and slaves. I will not 
ignore them. " Servants, be obedient to your masters 
according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in 
singleness of heart, as unto Christ; not with eye- 
service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, 
doing the will of God from the heart ; with good will 
doing service, as to the Lord and not to men ; know- 
ing that whatsoever good thing a man docth, the 
same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond 
or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto 
them, forbearing threatening; knowing that your 
Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of 
persons with him."* " Masters, give unto your ser- 
vants that which is just and equal, knowing that your 

!,. vi. 5 9. 



16 

Master also is in heaven." * " Servants, be subject 
to your masters with all fear, not only to the good 
and gentle, but also to the froward " t These quota- 
tions include the substance of the teachings of the 
apostles on this subject. 

Now, if the apostles in these instructions meant 
to sanction slaveholding at that time, or meant to 
approve the idea of property in a human being, so 
that their allusions to slavery can be fairly construed 
to abridge the natural right of any human being now, 
then they meant to sanction the whole of Roman 
slavery, except so far as they prohibited some abuses 
attending it, in express terms. If these instructions 
imply a moral tolerance of the law of property in 
a human being then prevailing, they equally imply a 
moral sanction of the law then in force giving the 
master the power of life and death over the slave. 
The apostles did not forbid in express terms the slave- 
trade, then legal, and carried on in the islands and 
ports of the Mediterranean ; therefore, according to 
this argument, they authorized it. They did not attack 
the law then forbidding slaves to marry; therefore 
they not only sanctioned for all time the idea of prop- 
erty in a human being, but deprived slaves of the 
protection of Christianity in the relation of marriage. 

* Col. iv. 1. t 1 Pet. ii. 18. 



17 

The argument proves too much, and therefore fails. 
It is destructive of the gospel itself.* These instruc- 
tions implied no approval or tolerance of the " chattel- 
principle." They applied chiefly to the relation of 
service, and will always be needed to enforce a reli- 
gious fidelity in that relation. They applied to 
servants, to slaves as servants, and to servants who 
were not slaves ; and there were many of this last 
class. They are permanently applicable to the inter- 
course of employers and employed, — to service, which, 
when rights are recognized, is not derogatory but 
honorable to man. The minister of a parish, the 
agent of a railroad or manufacturing corporation, the 
clerk of a mercantile house, the public officer, the per- 
son employed on the farm, in the shop, or in the 
household, is each a servant, and ought to do his duty 
" with good will " and from a religious motive, as a 
service to Christ, while it is owed by contract to man. 
And the exhortation to masters to give unto their ser- 
vants what is just and equal, seems incompatible with 
the idea of their being chattels. It recognizes in 
them a right of property, and conveys an implication 

* See Dr. Wayland's Sixth Letter to Dr. Fuller. In reference to the 
supposed sanction to the system of domestic slavery derived from the words 
of the apostles, Dr. Wayland justly remarks, that, "if the religion of 
( hrist allows us to take such a license from such precepts as these, the 
New Testament Avould be the greatest curse ever inflicted on our race." 



18 

opposed to the fundamental idea of slavery. Let that 
injunction be complied with now in this land, in a 
pecuniary sense ; let masters offer to their slaves, in 
traces, what is just and equal acccording to the com- 
mon sense of working people, and it would bring 
American slavery to a speedy end ; for most bondmen 
would soon purchase their own bodies and souls by 
the sweat of the brow. 

But the instructions to servants were, partly, and so 
far as given to slaves, precepts of non-resistance ; 
expedient in their helpless situation, and in the feeble 
condition of the infant church, but nowise annulling 
any one's natural right. They are to be construed in 
the same manner as the non-resistant precepts of 
Jesus, which few interpreters have received literally 
and absolutely, and as annulling the rights which 
they teach us sometimes to waive for the sake of 
accomplishing a greater good. A Christian now may, 
for a time, submit to a wrong, and yield a personal 
right, for a higher ulterior good than its instant 
vindication would be. But this does not annul his 
right, nor oblige him always to forbear vindicating it, 
nor release others from the obligation to do him 
immediate justice, so far as lies in their power. Were 
you and I reduced to slavery in a pagan community, 
I could exhort you to make the relation of service as 



19 



pleasant to yourselves, and as profitable to your 
masters, as possible, so long as you could not escape 
from it, by a daily exhibition of the Christian virtues ; 
to be subject to the fro ward as well as the gentle ; to 
be faithful to every trust reposed in you, not as an 
acknowledgment of your masters' claims, but in just- 
ice to yourselves and to Christ. I would counsel you, 
as constituting a band of missionaries among the 
heathen, to resist no wrong, but to use the opportu- 
nity to commend and propagate the true faith. But, 
in doing this, I might not intend to make void (and 
could not make void) any of your natural rights, or 
those of your posterity, or to prohibit any and every 
attempt to recover them when Providence should 
appear to favor it. And, although I might not at 
once assail the barbarian law under which you were 
held slaves, it might become my duty, or that of my 
successors, to assail it when the Christian faith should 
be publicly and generally received and professed in 
that community. Thus the instructions of the apos- 
tles to slaves annulled not their natural right, nor the 
duty of others to help them to obtain it, so soon as 
that duty should come to light by the more perfect 
operation of Christianity, '['he apostles, then, cannot 
fairly be understood to have declared or implied the 
rightfulness of slavery. They taught what, it is 



20 



admitted, would lead to a conviction of its wrongful- 
ness. A time would arrive when it would come into 
such relations with received truth, and with all social 
circumstances, that it must be felt to be sinful ; — 
when the apostles, if living, or their successors, if 
commanded to aid in enslaving or re-enslaving a 
human being, would refuse obedience. Indeed, the 
case of helping to deliver a fugitive from a Free State 
into bondage could not happen in their experience ; 
and therefore nothing they said to masters or slaves 
in their circumstances applies, on this point, to our 
circumstances, applies to such a case* And, if they 
taught what must at length lead to the conviction of 
the sinfulness of slaveholding, we cannot doubt, that, 
at this distance of time and in our advanced stage of 
Christian progress, if dwelling with us and summoned 
to acknowledge by a distinct act the doctrine of 
property in man, they would say, with their old 
devotion to truth and in the spirit of their ancient 

* The case of the return of Onesimus to Philemon is not parallel to the 
rendition of a fugitive under the present law. It is not certain that he was 
a slave ; for the word doulos means also servant, and was applied sometimes 
to a freed man. But, if a slave, Rome was not a free community. It was 
not in the power of the Christians to protect him there ; and he might wish 
to return to his former home, especially when he knew he Avould go as a 
Christian convert to Christian brethren, and have every church-privilege. 
Paul asked, and confidently expected, Philemon to receive Onesimus, "not 
as a servant, but above a servant, and as a brother beloved." The action 
appears to have been, in spirit, not a compliance with slave-law, but bring- 
ing together two persons for their mutual help and happiness. 



21 



martyrdom, "We ought to obey God rather than 
man ; " and would suffer any penalty rather than here 
subject a fellow-being to a system which one of the 
most distinguished interpreters of their writings, Mr. 
Stuart himself, declares it impossible for one man to 
subject another to, and do as he would be done by. 

There is nothing in the silence or the words, then, 
of Christ and his apostles which authorizes a disciple 
now to lend an active or a moral support to the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law ; nothing to annul or lessen the obli- 
gation to do as we would be done by, and to love our 
neighbor as ourselves. There is no evading the radi- 
cally unchristian and iniquitous character of such 
an action, except by attempting to throw the respon- 
sibility upon those who demand it. This has been 
done. It is said, that, when we help to return a man 
to servitude, the merit or demerit of the act attaches 
solely to the State whose laws make him a slave. 
And, strange enough, this is said by those who would 
hold me responsible for whatever consequences may 
follow a refusal to support the Fugitive Slave Law. 
"With glaring inconsistency, I am to be held accounta- 
ble for consequences which I do not intend, but which 
others, offended by my refusal to do wrong, threaten, 
and may bring about ; but I am to be acquitted of all 
guilt for the natural and proper effect of my action. 



22 



the enslaving of a fellow-being, which I know will 
follow it. It is a poor evasion. Suppose the Turkish 
sultan had surrendered the noble Kossuth to Nicholas 
and Austria, and to an ignominious death, and said to 
the world, " I am not responsible : I only gave him 
up to the laws of Austria," — what should we say, but 
that he had added a contemptible falsehood to con- 
temptible cowardice 1 

When I bring before me the condition to which 
the law in question consigns its prey, I say of it, 
as Mr. Stuart says of the law in some Slave States 
forbidding to teach slaves to read, — I say of the whole 
system as he says of an incidental but essential po- 
licy of its supporters, — " In such a case, obedience 
to a human law is crime: it is treason to the majesty 
of heaven and earth." I advise no one to resist it by 
force ; but I cannot obey it. To do so, I feel that I 
must deny in one act all that is most precious in my 
religious and political education, all that I believe, all 
that it has been the business of my mature life to 
teach. Reared in the belief of the divine origin of the 
Christian law of life, and of the truth contained in 
the Declaration of Independence, that all men are 
born with inalienable rights, and assenting with my 
whole soul to the preamble of the Constitution when 
it sets forth its own design and the true end of 

LofC. 



23 

government to be to establish justice, if I could open 
m\ Lips to cheer on the infamous slave-hunt, — if I 
could point out to the pursuing officer the fugitive's 
way, — if, after three quarters of a century, I could 
do that which the framers of the Constitution would 
not name in that instrument, I should be false to 
the noblest truth I have learned and loved. There 
is a Law higher than any law of man, when it enjoins 
what Christianity forbids. And whatever may be said 
of the danger of obeying individual conviction, or of 
the evils which have flowed, and may again flow, from 
perverted consciences, I cannot submit to the dictation 
of any man, or body of men, in an action so vital to 
the soul as that now demanded. I will obey govern- 
ment in all things lawful, all things not immoral and 
inhuman ; but no further. 1 know of no other rule 
of life for a Christian than to obey the will of God as 
revealed to himself in Christ's gospel, interpreted 
dispassionately, and with the best aids to be ob- 
tained. And I know of nothing, at this time, so 
likely to pervert both reason and conscience, as the 
attempt to reconcile with this gospel any active or 
moral support of this law. 

A distinguished divine remarks,* that " there is 
such a thing as a law of conscience which is above 

Dr. Dewey, in his speech at Pittsfield. 



24 



any constitution, any compact, any advantage what- 
ever. If I were required to blaspheme God, to tell a 
lie, to avouch here in the presence of God that to 
be true which I knew to be false, I firmly say I 
would not do it to save my life, or your lives, or the 
life of a whole nation. Or if the Southern people 
were idolaters, and would make no compact with us 
but on condition that we would worship their gods, I 
say that we could not do it. Or if they were wor- 
shippers of Moloch, and demanded as the condition of 
Union with them that we should send to them a hun- 
dred of our children every year to go through the fire 
to their idol, I say we could not do it." I accept this ; 
and when I think of asking God's aid and Christ's 
spirit in rendering up a being like myself to a condi- 
tion which " contradicts the first and fundamental 
principle of the Bible, that all are of one blood; which 
degrades men made in the image of God into brute 
beasts; in which all the sacred social relations of 
life are destroyed ; in which ignorance, profound and 
nearly universal, is the lot of the great mass held in 
bondage ; which is a degradation of a whole class of a 
community below their proper rank as men ; " * — 
when I think of giving, by a distinct act, a moral 

* I have copied the heads of a description of slavery in the Southern 
States by Mr. Stuart, omitting the worst from considerations of delicacy. 



To 



support to such, a system, I feel that by doing it 
I should blaspheme God and Christ ; I should tell a 
lie ; I should help to bind the victim for Moloch ; 
I should participate in the worship of a false god ; I 
should give a moral support to as iniquitous and inhu- 
man a system as I know. It is this moral support 
which they want who demand this act of me. It is the 
" principle of the thing," not the property, they care 
for. Now, precisely on account of the principle, I 
would not do it, though I knew consequences would 
follow my refusal worse than any which I deem very 
probable, or which I think would be at all likely to 
happen, if all good men of the Free States would 
firmly and at once make that refusal. I would not do 
it to save my life or your lives ; and it is inconceiva- 
ble that a " nation's life " can depend on my doing 
what is abhorrent to Christian morality. There are 
immoralities not to be compared with consequences, as 
there are no scales for weighing the soul against the 
world. I will make any sacrifice to avert danger but 
that which no bribes or threats ought ever to extort 
from a man. 

The divine quoted says : " I feel for the poor fugi- 
tive, and I will do what I can to save him from his 
fate. . . . His going back is a thing most painful to 
me. But ... I would consent that my own brother, 
4 



26 



my own son, should go ; ten times rather I would go 
myself, than that this Union should be sacrificed for 
me or for us." That a man whom no domestic ties 
imperiously bound, and carrying with him the solaces 
of the gospel and the Christian sympathies of all he 
left behind, could go voluntarily, and take the exter- 
nal condition of a slave, if that would preserve our 
peace, and overthrow oppression, I can conceive. But 
that he should put himself into the darkness and 
hopelessness of that condition is impossible. The 
comparison of such a case to that of the fugitive is 
nothing to the purpose. Suppose Massachusetts 
should compel him to go in the fugitive's stead, and 
to remain, what then? Would he name any con- 
sequences in mitigation of the moral atrocity? Or 
would he consent that his own brother or his own 
son should be compelled to go as a peace-offering? 
Brother or son, I thank him for the word. It gives 
the true test. I look around me : I try to think of 
some head of a family torn from it by violence, for no 
crime, by a fate to which drowning at sea or perish- 
ing of fever would be a blessed boon; or of some 
young man with bright hopes preparing for the busi- 
ness of life, or of some fair young woman, — of my 
own child, — put into actual slavery, with all its liabili- 
ties ; I think of hopes blasted, of faculties stifled, of 



27 



mind extinguished, of the doom on posterity, — and 
of this as a peace-offering, — and that I should con- 
sent to this. No! not to save the Union, — not to 
save any thing, — not to save the universe. For where 
is God I Where is the soul % Where is law, the law 
which has its seat in the bosom of God % Where is 
man's moral nature ] Where is left any thing worth 
saving I I consent to that ! As soon would I consent 
to turn this house of our solemnities into a heathen 
temple, to become the priest of pagan rites, to help 
you to bind my own child on the altar and slay him as 
a sacrifice to appease the anger of an unknown God, 
that we might then go to our homes in the hope to 
dwell there in peace and safety. Thus I should feel 
about delivering a brother or a child to the fate of sla- 
very. According to Christ, the fugitive is our brother 
or our child: he is the victim, the human peace- 
offering to an unknown God, to be sacrificed that you 
and I may prosper. And these victims to be offered 
by hundreds annually ! I should look upon the dis- 
memberment of these States as one of the greatest 
political evils. But I can never yield principle to 
threatening clamor about disunion ; nor can I mea- 
sure the infinite with the finite, or weigh prosperity 
against the deepest demoralization. 

Finally, I distrust the expediency as much as I 



28 



abhor the morality of the Fugitive Law. There are 
consequences of doing wrong, — fearful judgments 
which overtake communities and governments who 
trample divine law under their feet. A course of 
policy which has to " conquer " the blessed " preju- 
dices" of our religious and moral education, which 
wars against human nature, which is in conflict with 
all the spiritual and ethical instruction we are seeking 
to diffuse, by our religious associations, through our 
growing country, offers no stability. Justice is the 
only firm basis of peace. 

I believe the fundamental principles of religion and 
morality to be involved in the question which is now 
forced upon our consideration. In those deliberate 
determinations of our lives which are of great signifi- 
cance and widest influence, it becomes us to act in 
such a manner as we shall look back upon without 
regret for ever. " Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, 
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." 



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